Peculiar Institution
by J. K. Baduini
Summary: In a world where the Scream Extractor is a name on every tongue and human children have become part of the workforce, Randall Boggs makes an irrational decision and has to deal with the consequences. AU.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Peculiar Institution  
**Rating:** T, for some possible coarse language and the eventual inclusion of adult themes

**Summary:** In a world where the Scream Extractor is a name on every tongue and human children have become part of the workforce, Randall Boggs makes an irrational decision and has to deal with the consequences.

**Disclaimer:** All canon settings, concepts, and characters belong to the good people at Pixar and Disney who created _Monsters, Inc._ All original material, including characters and concepts, are otherwise mine.

**Author's Notes:** All right, folks, welcome to "Peculiar Institution" and thank you for giving my fic a chance. This is my first _Monsters, Inc._ fic (and likely only, unless Inspiration smacks me particularly hard).

Now, this is an Alternate Universe fic. What would have happened, I asked myself when this idea first occurred to me, had Mike and Sulley not made it back to the monster world? What would have happened had Mr. Waternoose's plan for rejuvenating Monsters, Inc. had succeeded?

In PI, I've answered that, the way I see it. Other than Sulley and Mike remaining banished in the human world, the only other change I've made is that the CDA was never investigating the company.

Armed with that background info, I beg you, go forth into my fic and read. I hope you enjoy.

* * *

The intricately postered bedroom door creaked faintly as Corinne pushed it open, padding with near silence into her room and dropping her bag on the floor. If she could just keep from making a sound, maybe she could… 

"Mmm-hmm. And where have you been that's kept you out this late at night—again?"

His voice was accusatory, and Corinne didn't blame him. Curfew had been, oh, an hour ago, and she hadn't bothered to call. He emerged from the shadow-cloaked corner of her room, arms crossed, glasses glinting dangerously. His dark hair, usually so neatly styled, was looking a little frayed at the edges, a sure indication that he had been up for a long time; waiting for her, no doubt.

"David," she said simply, dropping her head and trying to look properly regretful. "I'm so sorry. I meant to call, really I did! But I left my phone at home and no one else had any reception—" The thin man who was her guardian held up one hand, forestalling the rest of her story.

"Corinne, if I want to hear your excuses, I'll sit in on one of your classes at school," he said gravely, sighing. "I know you give your teachers plenty of them—they sure call me enough about it. I really don't want to do this, but…well, I think I'm going to have to ground you." Corinne's face fell.

"David, I'm sorry!" she protested. "I didn't mean to stay out this late! You know I lose track of time easy!"

"I know you do," the man said. "That's why I persist in buying you watches of all shapes and sizes, which you consistently ignore."

"But—!"

"No 'buts'," he said firmly, crossing the room to stand right in front of her. Always a tall man, David towered over her. "I warned you that if this happened again, there'd be trouble. It's happened; now there's trouble." He lifted his hands, resting them on her shoulders and looking her directly in the eye. "I knew what I was getting myself into when I agreed to keep an eye on you for your mother until you could fend for yourself, but…"

"You're regretting it, aren't you?" she asked hotly, eyes narrowing.

"No, no, nothing like that," he assured her. A quizzical look crossed his face, as if that was something he hadn't even considered. "No, it's just that sometimes the things you do…I don't know, they make me think I've gotten myself in over my head." He sighed again, gesturing with one hand, as if trying to grasp some elusive concept or phrasing for what he was trying to say. Corinne crossed her arms now, resolutely looking away. David growled under his breath.

"Forget it," he said suddenly, throwing both hands up in the air and turning away. "I won't try talking to you if you're not going to listen." He spun away, the hem of his coat flaring as he stormed to her door. "But if I catch you outside of this room again before I give you leave, I'll smear you in goat's blood and send you to Ecuador." With that unique threat, he turned on one booted heel, slipping as silently from the room as she had entered it. Corinne stared straight ahead for a minute, before clenching her fists and whirling towards the door.

"Fine!" she screamed. "Fine! Be that way! See what I care! I'll be out of your damned hair in a few years anyway!" She stomped across the room and slammed the door with as much force as she could muster, before stomping just as noisily back to her bed and throwing herself down on it. She buried her head in her arms and, without really meaning to, began to sob.

* * *

Randall Boggs pushed the chair he was seated in back from his desk, taking care not to send it into one of those dizzying spins it seemed so fond of performing. He was getting fed up with the trivial work he was doing. Loathe though he was to admit it, he almost missed the days when he got to work hands on with the children that were being brought in so regularly now. Ever since he had perfected the Scream Extractor and had it patented (under Mr. Waternoose's name, unfortunately), he'd been relegated to the office work befitting a monster on Monsters, Incorporated's Board of Directors. It was _boring_ as all hell. 

He did make a boatload of money for doing almost nothing though, which was a perk. The job of scarer, the position he had held in the company before being suddenly booted up to Director, had paid better than most as well, because it was thought to be so dangerous. But when the price of power had fluctuated, their wages fluctuated, and it had run a little thin sometimes.

That no longer mattered, though, to anyone; it was all thanks to him. He had revolutionized the scaring industry! The Scream Extractor, the machine that pulled pure scream energy from human children, was his brainchild and his beloved creation. He had come up with the idea, he had designed it, and he had even built a good part of it, with help from his assistant Fungus. After the initial prototype had been completed, there had been an incident with some former scarers at the company that nearly set work back to the initial stages, but Waternoose had taken care of that problem for him. Randall didn't know where Sullivan and Wazowski were in the human world, and frankly, he didn't care.

Waternoose hadn't been able to secure the patent on the machine, though, until one final, crucial thing was proven—human children were not toxic, in any way. That had been quite the difficult hurdle to surmount, though convincing the multitudes of monsters that the findings were correct was harder than actually proving it. He had managed that too, and it had catapulted him into fame. He was living the good life now, even when one didn't take into account the interesting little side effect the final model of the Scream Extractor had on humans.

It had come as a complete surprise. As it developed, the SE didn't just suck the scream, the energy source so vital to everyday monster life, from the kids; it sucked the personality out of them too. All of it. They were left as zombies—impressionable, commandable, controllable little zombie kids. Zombie kids couldn't be quietly returned to their rooms, now could they? That, at least, was the logic that had led to the idea of keeping the kids in the monster world, and it wasn't long before they were running errands and doing those little, dirty jobs that no one wants to, even if someone had to.

Randall had refrained from purchasing a human servant, though he probably wouldn't even have to pay for one if he wanted it. He found the practice disgusting, and something about those emotionless little drones unnerved him. They were always blank-eyed and spoke in monotone voices, if they could be coaxed to speak at all. They exhibited no signs of intelligence, and it was creepy. He preferred to be able to converse coherently with the people who worked for him.

Today they were trying something new, though, and he was looking forward to it. Up until now, the humans used for the SE process had never been older than ten years, the age at which most young humans began growing out of their easily-scared stage. It was logical to use the humans that had been the easiest to scare when scarers were still needed to produce energy, because it was assumed that those abducted were already conditioned to screaming in response to monsters. However, an important question had been raised at the last meeting of the Board of Directors: what does it matter if they are preconditioned or not? The scream is taken forcibly from them anyway. Couldn't older, larger humans produce more?

So today was the start of a new round of testing on human subjects—older ones. They were going to try taking teenagers ranging from eleven to seventeen years of age today, to see if the extraction process was more profitable with them. In fact, there was the signal he was waiting for now; the intercom unit on his office desk buzzed, and his secretary's voice, honey-sweet, rang through.

"Mr. Waternoose requests your presence on Acquisition Floor B, Mr. Boggs, sir."

Randall leaned forward, pressing the reply button. "Tell him I'm coming," he ordered, getting to his feet without waiting for a reply. He stepped around his desk and exited the office. He nodded to his secretary, a tall thin monster with a profusion of legs that went on forever and a halo of wild hair about her face, and passed through into the hall. Once out there, he picked up speed, hurrying out of the management wing of the building and into the Human Child Acquisition Floors. He made a point of nodding or waving cordially at anyone he happened to pass, but didn't give any of them a chance to say more than a word or two of greeting before he was gone.

Apparently, Mr. Waternoose requesting his presence on Floor B didn't necessarily mean that the head boss himself would be there—the big monster was conspicuous only by his absence. Not that Randall had any problem with that, of course; he'd just as much rather not have to deal with the pompous old man and that omnipresent little human tagalong he seemed so fond of publicly showing off. The team of monsters in charge of doing the actual job of capturing the humans (affectionately called Kid Katchers) were all gathered already and setting up. A chorus of greetings rang out to meet him as he entered the cavernous room.

Raising his upper pair of arms, Randall signaled for silence, which he instantly got. He glanced around at the gathered monsters, feeling an unexpected surge of pride at seeing them answer so willingly to him.

"Everyone's acquainted with the procedure for today?" he asked loudly, tilting his head to one side and listening for the expected reply. It came instantly, all in the affirmative. "Good. Glad to hear it. Don't forget those precautions we talked about. Older humans are potentially dangerous—be on the lookout for anything. You never know what they might pull." There was some concern that these older humans would be more unpredictable and violent than the younger ones. This team of Kid Katchers had been hand selected by him and was made up of only the bravest, most skilled, and craftiest of them. It took a quick mind to make sure the abductions went off silently and without a hitch, and these monsters had it. Humans were known to bite, kick, throw things, thrash, and above all, scream like banshees when monsters invaded their rooms, and they could not be allowed to scream and bring their parents at any cost, which was why craftiness was a Kid Katcher's most valuable skill.

Randall took a moment to look over the stations lined up and prepared for use. They looked like the stations that had been used by scarers in the past, but hey, wasn't that what they were? There was a closet door and a scream collection canister set up at each one. (If something went wrong, there was no sense in wasting good scream!) A monster stood outside each door, ready to leap inside and take the child in the room. Assistants stood at the ready, waiting to man the cages built to hold the children when they were caught. All they needed was the signal, and they would spring into action.

The pride was still there, and deservedly so—this, all of this, was only happening because of him. It was _his_ doing, the result of _his_ work. He'd trained these monsters, developed the methods and protocol they followed, designed the whole damn system. It was a thing of efficient beauty. He had a right to be proud.

He looked up once more at the row of Kid Katchers waiting for his signal, and nodded once. Somewhere over his head, an alarm blared, shrilly, and it was all they needed to hear. Within an instant, they were through the doors, and he was left alone on the floor with the assistants.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** So there you go! That's the first chapter of "Peculiar Institution". 

PI is unusual (in terms of my fanfic habits) in that I haven't finished yet—I don't make a habit of posting unfinished fic, because I don't want to take the risk of running out of steam on a story and leaving it in permanent hiatus. I know I can finish this story, though, which is why I've decided to begin posting it, even unfinished. I just…really feel like all I need is some positive feedback to get me rolling. Knowing that I have people who are reading it and expect me to finish—knowing I'm obligated to you—will hopefully help me over the hump.

Man, that came out like a really complicated plea for reviews, didn't it? Bugger. Well, er…review if you want to, and the next chapter will be up in about a week. All feedback is welcome and appreciated. Thank you!


	2. Chapter 2

**Title:** Peculiar Institution  
**Rating:** T, for some possible coarse language and the eventual inclusion of adult themes

**Summary:** In a world where the Scream Extractor is a name on every tongue and human children have become part of the workforce, Randall Boggs makes an irrational decision and has to deal with the consequences.

**Disclaimer:** All canon settings, concepts, and characters belong to the good people at Pixar and Disney who created Monsters, Inc. All original material, including characters and concepts, are otherwise mine.

**Author's Notes:** And here's chapter two of "Peculiar Institution"! To remind anyone who may have forgotten since last week, this story's an AU, presenting my answer to the question, "What would have happened if Mike and Sulley never made it back from the human world?" It's a misleading phrasing of the question, I'm afraid. I think it's only fair to warn you Mike and Sulley fans now that they will _not _be showing up in PI; this fic's Randall-centric.

Enough blather. Enjoy the chapter!

* * *

Corinne didn't cry for long. It just wasn't in her nature to do so; it wasn't productive to sit on her bed and cry. She sat up, wiping tears and drip from her nose away with the back of her hand, and took a deep breath. She knew she had no right to be mad at David, no right at all, and it was only making her feel worse. 

She got to her feet and sighed, running her hands over her scalp. The bare skin fuzzed against her palm—she would have to shave again soon. Maybe she should do that tonight. Surely David would let her out of the room long enough to attend to basic hygiene. Remembering the look on his face when she'd first come home bald, years ago now, brought a smile to her lips, but it was a weak one and didn't last long. She'd pushed him. Again.

David wasn't her father. As far as she knew, he wasn't related to her physically at all, though to hear it told, the adoption agency she'd come from originally had barely any records on her, so there was always a distant chance. No, he wasn't her father, not physically and not in the emotional sense either. He was just David, the man who took care of her, and had been since she was little. That was The Way It Was. And he did a creditable job of it, too, when she wasn't making it hard for him.

Corinne frowned. She wasn't too fond of introspection, especially at times like now, because she knew—_knew_—that _she_ was entirely in the wrong here. It was something she didn't like to think about—it was hard to feel tragic and put-upon when one's confinement was one's own fault, and there was nothing she wanted more at the moment to feel tragic and put upon. She turned her mind resolutely away from thought and examined herself in the mirror on her wall. The crying had made her makeup, dark and dramatic, come down, so that she looked something like a monochrome clown. Uck.

With a dramatic sigh, she dropped into the chair in front of her desk and reached for a paper towel. Scrubbing the makeup off made her feel a little better and a lot cleaner, and she _really_ did need to take a razor to her skull. She was beginning to look like she had hair—ew.

Grounded. Okay. She'd been grounded before; she could do grounded again. She chucked the paper towel in the general direction of the wastebasket and reached for her radio. Immediately, the sound of wailing electric guitars filled the room, and she was quite willing to crank it up loud and let the music blast the thought out of her head. She leaned back and closed her eyes. Fabulous.

Then her bed jumped on her.

That was what it seemed like, anyway. Something smashed into her from above and behind, and she was enveloped in a fluttering sheet. She flailed, letting out a yell in protest, and almost immediately something long and flat clamped across her mouth.

She felt a thrill of panic, the first, as she tried to scream again and was muffled. She couldn't see anything but a rough crosshatch less than in inch in front of her, and as she pushed desperately back, toppling the chair in her haste, what felt like hard, warm cables wrapped around and around her, pinning her arms to her sides and lifting her feet off the ground.

Her panic was full-fledged now; this was no prank or practical joke. David wasn't going to release her; they weren't going to have a good laugh about this. She began to kick, driving her heels up and back as hard as she could, but she'd barely landed two blows before her legs were bound too. Then there was nothing she could do, but she thrashed and strained and tried to scream anyway.

A confused sensation of movement, a strange rush of sound, and not ten seconds later she was tumbled to the ground, still tangled in whatever it was that covered her eyes. Her limbs loose now, she tore free of it, cursing all the way. She tried to leap aggressively to her feet and ended up sprawling, tripped by the loop of the fabric tangled around her ankles.

Something laughed, and she looked up and saw a Thing.

It was taller than she was, purple and blue, with a long body and too many limbs. It had striking green eyes, and it was those that freaked her out the most of all, because not only did they look too human to be set in such a bizarre face, but they were undeniably _intelligent_ as well, and that scared her.

And it was laughing at her.

An unexpected rush of anger flooded her, and she felt her teeth bare in a snarl. She twisted around and drew her feet to her, nimble fingers untangling them and pushing the offending sheet away. But when she turned back, it—whatever it was—was gone.

Corinne deflated. She got to her feet, shaky and uncertain, all anger gone just as quickly as it had come, and took a look around. She was standing in a cage about the size of a walk-in closet; the cage was in a huge hangar of a room, at the end of line of maybe a dozen others. Almost all of them, she noticed, held kids like her, though none looked as old as she. Gray walls soared up and curved into a roof a remarkable distance up—the room they were in was massive, if not empty.

Far from empty, in fact. All around bustled Things, no single one looking like another. Corinne backed away from one passing close to her, shying from a touch that never came. It was a tall, thin Thing, poisonously green and yellow in color and covered from head to foot in long fur. It had long, strong arms and hands with too many fingers. Vaguely humanoid in shape, it was by no means the most bizarre looking inhabitant of the room.

She scrunched down in the bottom of the cage, which had a solid floor and a wall maybe eighteen inches tall around it before it separated into bars. She pressed her back into the corner; it was too overwhelming. Corinne buried her head in her hands, squeezed her eyes closed, and tried to convince herself that none of this was real.

* * *

Within a minute, it was over. The last Kid Katcher bustled through the assigned door in exactly fifty-three seconds, a multitude of tentacles wrapped around a flailing bundle in a sheet. (The idea behind the sheets was that if the targets couldn't see, they wouldn't fight, and even if they did they'd get too caught up to do any damage.) Martinez rolled his acquisition into the cage his assistant had ready and locked the door. 

"Success, sir," he told Randall with a smile. Randall was not unfamiliar with the adrenaline rush of a textbook capture, and Martinez had been assigned one of the older kids, who were most likely to cause trouble. He was willing to overlook the patent obviousness of the statement.

The Kid Katcher ducked away to consult with his assistant, and Randall looked into cage. The kid was struggling to get free of the sheet; he reached between the bars and yanked. It promptly surged free and just as promptly tripped and fell heavily to the bottom of the cage. It had a lot of skin exposed for a human, and was completely hairless, though the dark shadow on the head indicated incipient regrowth. Randall had to laugh at how ludicrous it looked. It looked up at the sound and their eyes met for a brief moment. Its eyes were dark brown, nearly black, and set in a face that, despite the lack of hair, looked feminine (he thought—it was hard to tell with humans, sometimes). There was something clear in her gaze, a comprehension more complete than the blank uncertainty he was used to seeing in the younger ones. Then a look of rage transfigured her features, and he could only laugh harder. Anger was not an uncommon reaction.

There had been sixteen kids slated for acquisition tonight, and an even dozen of the cages now contained a newly acquired teenage human. He glanced at each of them in turn, judging their reactions and comparing them to what they usually saw in the younger ones. A lot of the females seemed to be crying, some of them hysterically. That was usually the _most_ common response, especially among the younger humans they kidnapped. The males, though, seemed to be blustering; that was new. They were threatening all the monsters around them, with fists and with words both, swearing they were going to invoke whatever human agency it was they thought could help them. Underneath their thin veneer of bravado, however, was an unmistakable undercurrent of fear; they were terrified and this was how they showed it. Randall chuckled to himself as one particularly weedy boy lunged at him, brandishing all but useless fists and demanding his rights in a high voice that kept breaking spectacularly. He ignored all of them.

All in all Randall was pleased with the day's work. Twelve children successfully caught out of sixteen was better than they'd hoped, for it was a lot harder to kidnap children than scare them, and forays were abandoned at a much higher rate. Since there were so many closet doors that could be used, so many different opportunities to catch the kids they required, it wasn't imperative that they attempt to complete every assignment, no matter what. Besides, Waternoose had a team of monsters already at work constructing a viable human breeding program so that the monster world would eventually become independent from the human one. It would be infinitely easier for all concerned if they didn't have to rely on the uncertainty of the acquisition system forever.

He watched as the assistants began the quick task of returning the doors and transferring the caged humans to the holding chamber. The process was almost entirely automated—the doors were returned to the massive storeroom, and a sister system latched onto the cages from above and took them out of the acquisition floor. (The move was met with a new chorus of screams and sobbing; not a surprise.) The kids would wait in the next room, unknowingly, for the SE process to begin. After that took place, a dealer in human servants would come and take the newly-pacified children away to be evaluated and sold, but that was out of Monsters, Inc.'s hands. They had nothing to do with that—it was actually the descendant agency of the CDA that took care of that. The CAA, or Child Authorization Agency, employed mostly ex-CDA agents.

To his surprise, though, he found himself watching the last cage in the row, the one that held the bald girl. She wasn't crying or threatening or banging on the bars like all the others. No, she seemed remarkably calm; if her eyes were suspiciously watery, at least they were open, and she was watching her surroundings as her cage began to move. Or rather, he realized with something like a shock, she was watching him. Their eyes met again as she rose, and the intensity of her gaze was enough to make him look away first, unnerved. When he looked back up again, she was gone, along with all of the others.

Since he was going that way anyway, Randall volunteered to take the reports on today's activities with him up to management; he'd make sure they all got to where they needed to go. He had them spread on his desk and was paging through them—this was as good a time as any for a surprise inspection, so he was making sure the assistants were doing their jobs properly—when he realized something was bothering him. He tapped the fingers of one of his lower hands against the desk while putting one of the reports back in it folder with his upper, and tried to pinpoint it. There was one last report to check…it was hers.

He paged the folder open and was greeted with a distracted-looking picture of the girl. Her name was listed as Doe, Corinne, and according to this she was seventeen and an only child, living with a legal guardian by the name of David, with no surname provided. It was by no means a comprehensive compendium of information, but they really couldn't get much more than that without endangering the people who collected the data. Randall sat back in his chair, crossing both sets of arms, and gazing at a painting on the wall above his door without really seeing it. The tip of his tail, which was hanging at his feet, twitched rapidly, a sure sign that he was thinking hard. He leaned forward, and without really knowing what prompted him to do it, snatched up a pencil and erased the check over the "Success" box on the forms. He made a new mark in "Aborted," circling underneath the most common reason for mission failure—a pet sleeping in the child's room. No one would question that excuse, since, though the children had been proven to be okay, pets still posed a problem. He closed the folder with a decisive motion, and hopped lithely to his feet.

Walking out of his office like nothing was amiss, Randall handed the stack of folders to his secretary. "See that these get to the right place," he said, inserting a note of distraction into his voice. "I'll be leaving work early today. I've got somewhere I've got to be." He didn't bother lingering to hear her reply, and he was too deeply immersed in thought to have comprehended it anyway—he only abstractly noticed the sharp-edged smile she gave him as she took the paperwork. He was trying to think if there was anyone who would notice of one of the humans suddenly went missing, but the only people who came to mind were himself and the Kid Katchers. He certainly wasn't going to tell anyone, and the Katchers never had anything to do with the kids after they were secured. With no real recollection of how he got there, Randall found himself in front of the doors that opened on the small, individual chambers housing the kids. He paused, took a deep breath that in _no_ way belied nervousness, and pushed open the door.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** You can tell Randall didn't come up with the name 'Kid Katchers', 'cause it's disturbingly cutesy-wootsy. 

Many, many thanks to Random Drifter, Till My Head Falls Off, and SylverStrike for reviewing! The next chapter should be up in about a week, barring any unforeseen delays. All feedback is welcome and appreciated. Thank you!


	3. Chapter 3

**Title:** Peculiar Institution  
**Rating:** T, for some possible coarse language and the eventual inclusion of adult themes

**Summary:** In a world where the Scream Extractor is a name on every tongue and human children have become part of the workforce, Randall Boggs makes an irrational decision and has to deal with the consequences.

**Disclaimer:** All canon settings, concepts, and characters belong to the good people at Pixar and Disney who created _Monsters, Inc._ All original material, including characters and concepts, are otherwise mine.

**Author's Notes:** Here's chapter three, a week and a day later! I really have nothing to say to preface this chapter, so enjoy!

* * *

Just as crying had been futile when she was angry with David, so was it futile now. She didn't even shed a tear, and in fact looked with some scorn on those who were wasting their energy. Instead, she looked around as they were carried through a maze of halls. She tried to take heed of landmarks along the way so she could find her way back to wherever it was they had been should she manage to get free, but Corinne had trouble remembering her way around her own high school, and she'd only been going there for four years! How would she ever remember somewhere she'd never even been before?

Finally, it appeared that they were reaching the end of their journey. A pair of double doors swung open with a loud hydraulic hiss and admitted them into a room maybe half the size of the first huge one. Inside, lining either side of the room, stood what basically appeared to be bigger cages than the ones they were in, though these were stationary.

There were more Things waiting for them. One by one, their cages touched down, and she watched as her fellow teens were transferred into the larger ones by those…creatures. She tried not to look at the ones who roughly shoved her inside. With a final clang of metal on metal, the collection of Things left, escorted by the airborne empty cages.

There was a ledge along the back wall of her cell, wide and long enough to stretch out (as if there were any way she could relax enough to lay down). Still, she sat, and because it was something to do that didn't involve thinking in any way, she began to go through her pockets. There wasn't much—a handful of loose change, two crumpled dollar bills, a pencil stub, and a receipt for something with most of the printing wiped off. She leaned her back up against the wall, trying to close her ears and mind to the storm of sound around her, and began mechanically smoothing the dollars.

"Hey!" called the boy in the cage next to hers. She looked up, a quizzical expression on her face. "Yeah, you. How the hell are you acting so calm about all this bullcrap?!"

"Bullcrap?" she mouthed to herself incredulously. Her eyes narrowed; she shook her head. Though she didn't know him, she knew his kind—he looked thirteen or fourteen, old enough to think that he was a man, not knowing that he would still be a little kid to everyone but his friends for years yet. "I'm calm," she muttered, "because panic is pointless." She drew her legs up on to the ledge as well and locked her hands around the ankles, resting her chin on her knees. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "Irrational hysteria obscures reason," she said, making her voice dull and monotone and wracking her vocabulary for appropriately complex language, "and if reason is obscured, there will be no understanding. No understanding—"

He cut her off. "You freak!" he spat accusingly. "You cold dyke!" He stared at her, obviously waiting for some response. She shrugged noncommittally—neither were accusations she hadn't heard before—and he let out a sound of frustration. It was only after the boy had spun away that she permitted herself a small smile of triumph. Even at times like this, she insisted upon being contrary.

The hysterical racket her fellow abductees were making had subsided by then into nervous mutterings. Corinne ignored them resolutely; if they weren't trying to figure out how to escape, then she didn't care. She straightened her shoulders against the wall and let her eyes roam, willing herself to see something that she could use…somehow.

The sound of a door opening _just_ reached her ears over the babbling of the others, and her head jerked up so fast that a muscle in her neck seized and for a moment she couldn't move her head at all. Something came through—not just some thing, in fact but _the_ Thing, the purple creature with too many legs and too-green eyes.

The room fell silent. In their chambers, the kids fell silent, watching with wide eyes. One boy attempted a half-hearted threat in a trembling voice; a girl broke down into noisy sobs. The atmosphere was silence and tense, but if the Thing noticed, it gave no indication that was easily recognizable to her. As the Thing paced down the row, glancing at each kid in turn but otherwise paying them no attention, she felt a completely irrational certainty that it was looking for _her_. A swell a panic caught her and constricted her chest, and she had actually unfolded her legs and leaned forward, with the intention to dive under the ledge and hide, before her mind caught up with her body and stopped her. She _wasn't_ going to hide, even if it wanted her, even if it intended to do something protracted and painful and terrible to her.

Corinne sat straightened up, throwing her shoulders back and lifting her chin jauntily. It was out there, and their eyes met. She refused to let any of the gibbering fear swirling around inside her head show on her face—this was no different than staring down a teacher or standing her ground against troublemakers at school. No different.

It looked away first, reaching for the lock on the cage door. Apparently, it knew the code the electronic keypad required, because after a few beeps, the lock released with a hiss and the door swung open. The Thing stepped inside. She bared her teeth, fingers splaying against the unidentifiable substance of the wall. He turned his gaze on her now. "Don't try it," it warned, grinning and exposing a mouthful of incredibly sharp teeth. (It spoke perfectly understandable English, and that only served to unnerve her farther.) "I bite back." Somehow, she didn't doubt it. She could feel her pulse quickening as her heart rate picked up, the pounding in her ears and synchronizing with her increasingly erratic breathing.

"Hey," she snapped, "if you're going to, like, eat me or whatever, could you just get it over with? I don't handle suspense well." She crossed her arms defiantly over her chest, remembering a bit of advice the woman who had primarily raised her for the first ten years of her life had given her once: 'If you can't manage some wit in situations of adversity, don't both opening your mouth at all. You wouldn't want your last words to be lame, would ya?' It was something Corinne had taken to heart. She feigned nonchalance as she leaned back against the wall.

"Now that's just barbaric," he replied—the voice was deep enough, unambiguous enough that she associated a gender with it—making what could possibly pass for a face of disgust. It was hard to tell. "You'll be coming with me, though." He reached for her with one of his upper arms. She shied away, ducking under and around him to the other side of the cage.

"I don't think so," she said, affecting a younger, sweeter tone in her voice. "I was taught never to go anywhere with strangers, y'know." He whirled on her, spinning with an agility belied by his reptilian shape. She kicked back with one foot, the door swinging obligingly open behind her, turned on her heel, and bolted.

* * *

Damn. As soon as the girl had pushed open the door, he realized he should have seen it coming. Randall growled under his breath, springing forward and trying to grab her before she could get through the door, but all he got was a handful of the back of her vest. It was enough, though; the article of clothing caught around her arms as she tried to wrench free. The pause was all he needed to dart out of the chamber and grab her, swinging her around and slamming her up against the bars of the nearest chamber. The kid inside drew away, eyes wide, but Randall ignored him. All his concentration was on this little human, who was currently trying her best to push his arm away from where it was pressing against the column of her throat. He was perversely pleased to see that she looked discomposed and, perhaps, a little fearful. He seized her wrists with his lower arms, forcing them down.

"Will you just come with me?" he asked, making it clear that it he was not asking; the question mark was only a formality. "Trust me; it's better than the alternative." She tried to pull away, the muscles cording in her arms with the effort, but couldn't budge him. She stared at him with narrow eyes for a long minute, and then the fight went out of her.

"Fine," she whispered. "Whatever. 'S not like I have any choice anyway."

The first hallway outside the room was deserted, with not a monster to be seen up or down its length. It thankfully remained that way, and Randall didn't deem it necessary to warn the human to silence as they entered the more frequented halls. She was a smart girl; she seemed to have figured it out already, if the way her mouth was pressed into a thin line was any indication. More than once, they had to duck around a corner or into an empty room to avoid some bustling monster going about on his or her way, but the majority of the Monsters Inc. employees were nestled into their offices at this time of day, so the traffic in the corridors was relatively low.

At one point, when he and the girl were cautiously peering around a corner to ascertain its safety, Randall recognized the light, slapping footfalls of one of the most diminutive people regularly seen around the company building, and he reached out an arm to waylay the dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed little nine-year-old girl who was Waternoose's favorite messenger. She stopped obediently, turning slightly.

"Kari," he said simply.

"Yessir?" she replied, her voice even. She was steadily regarding the floor at his feet.

"This is what would have happened to you," he informed his girl, glancing back at her. With one hand, he tilted Kari's chin up so she could get a good look at those blank, lifeless eyes. With another he tugged her closer, forcing her to look. When she shuddered and tried to pull away, he nodded and released Kari, who had remained still and silent the whole time, not reacting to him at all.

"Run along, kid," he said, giving the little human a push in the back of her official-looking vest to start her off again. "Go back to what you were doing."

"Yessir." And she was off, bare feet picking up speed again quickly. With a tug on the teen's arm to get her attention again, Randall turned down the now-empty hallway. A few twists, turns, and short corridors later, he came to the private exit out into the high-level staff parking lot. It, too, was empty of people, if not of cars. The kid remained quiet until he had unlocked the door to his own vehicle, a monster of an SUV, pushed her inside, and climbed in himself.

"Who are you?" she demanded, leaning between the front seats and glaring at him. "Where is this place? Why, in all of sweet Lord Hades' domain, am I here?!"

"People call me Randall," he told her, turning the key and listening the vehicle below him purr sweetly into life.

"Is that just what people call you, or your name?" she asked. "'Cause people call me crazy, but I won't answer to it. Only Corinne will get my attention…or Little C, if you're A-Bagz. Which you aren't, so don't bother."

"Fine," he conceded, though somewhat reluctantly. "That's my name."

"One down," she said coldly, holding up three fingers and folding one down. "Two to go."

"Demanding much?" He turned in his seat to face her, scowling. "You're gonna have to work on your attitude, girl." As a response, she mutely held up two fingers. "We're in Monstropolis," he said after a moment.

"Which is—?" she prompted.

"A city."

"In—?"

"The monster world."

"Ach. _Wunderbar._ Perfectly logical, don't know why I didn't see it before," she growled, crossing her arms over her chest and flopping back against the seat, which barely even depressed under her slight weight. "A secret monster world in my closet and I get kidnapped into it. Typical."

"Actually," he interjected, "it's more like a secret monster world that exists parallel to yours with the closets simply linking the two." That shocked her into silence, and he took advantage of the lapse to shift the big vehicle into reverse and back out of the parking spot.

"One question to go," she snapped unhappily.

"Officially, you're here so our technicians can suck the scream out of you so we can use it to power this city."

"Scream?"

"Yeah. The screaming of human children is a power source for us," he explained distractedly, actually concentrating more on navigating his way out of the parking lot than talking to her. A glance in the rearview mirror showed him that she had bitten her lower lip and was looking away. She couldn't be easily seen from outside the car except from above, so he dismissed her from his mind. Besides, he was still trying to figure out what, exactly, possessed him to pull this little stunt off in the first place

* * *

**Author's Notes:** I have to admit I'm a little dissatisfied with the way this chapter turned out—something about it feels off—but to change it now would probably mean rewriting it completely, and then I'd have to adjust for that in all the _rest_ of the fic. I think I'll leave it.

Many, many thanks to cheatachu82, Till My Head Falls Off, and Finite20 for reviewing! It's always such a thrill to get a response to my chapters! Speaking of, the next one should be up in about a week, barring any unforeseen delays. All feedback is welcome and appreciated. Thank you!


	4. Chapter 4

**Title:** Peculiar Institution  
**Rating:** T, for some possible coarse language and the eventual inclusion of adult themes

**Summary:** In a world where the Scream Extractor is a name on every tongue and human children have become part of the workforce, Randall Boggs makes an irrational decision and has to deal with the consequences.

**Disclaimer:** All canon settings, concepts, and characters belong to the good people at Pixar and Disney who created _Monsters, Inc._ All original material, including characters and concepts, are otherwise mine.

**Author's Notes:** Okay, so it's been…something more than a week. My bad.

* * *

Long used to living in a too-small apartment in the city, it was still a refreshing sight for Randall to see his new home, for a home it truly was. An entire house that belonged to him, and only to him, and geared especially towards reptilian inhabitants. The windows on the sides of the building that faced the sun were numerous and large, allowing in all the solar energy possible, while the ones on the opposite sides were few and far between, to keep in the heat accrued. There were huge, live, healthy trees all around the building, adding a fresh look to the property. Behind the house itself was a smaller, rougher building—this was the stable that housed the two unicorns he had acquired for himself. It was also the focal point for the paddocks that contained the unicorns, and kept them from escaping and wreaking havoc on the neighbors' lands. 

Corinne was still silent as he pulled smoothly up the long drive, and had been the whole trip. In fact, as he glanced back at her, he realized she had fallen asleep. Her chin has touching her collarbone lightly and her hands were slack in her lap. She must have been exhausted, then, because he didn't think she'd have fallen asleep if she could have helped it. Even as he watched, she gave a small start, blinking and looking around quickly. She caught sight of him, and her expression darkened.

"Guess I wasn't dreaming, then," she muttered, looking away.

"Guess not," he replied, chuckling and hopping lithely from the truck. "Might as well get out," he called before he shut the door. "Get a look at your new home." He heard the whine and thud of the door as she got out, and in a moment was standing at his side.

"'S big," she commented, looking up at the house and surreptitiously trying to rub the sleep out of her eyes.

"I know," he said smugly, crossing both pairs of arms over his chest in a self-satisfied manner. Uncrossing the lower pair, he gestured for her to follow him and set off up the path to the front door. After a pause, he heard the soft footfalls that meant she was following, jogging to keep up with the quick clip he was setting.

He had been thinking about the best place to put the girl on the drive home, and didn't bother to show her much of his home other than the route between the front door and one of the small extra rooms on the upper floor that he had deemed suitable for his purposes. He could tell she was tired, which probably had something to do with why she was just following him tamely, head down, not making a sound. He pushed the door at the end of the hall open, and she preceded him inside. The bed in the room was one of those foldout ones—a futon. She lent a hand in pulling it out, and collapsed upon it as soon as it was stable. She must really have been drained, then. He watched her warily for a moment, before withdrawing from the room, locking the door behind him.

He slumped against the hall wall next the door, sighing harshly and massaging just behind his eyes with the fingers of his upper hands.

"What the hell have I gotten myself into?" he asked. There was no one else around to answer and his brain wasn't giving it up, so he shrugged and made his way back downstairs. The answering machine sitting in the kitchen was blinking regularly, which meant he had a single message. His hand hesitated for a moment over the play button—did he really want to deal with whoever was calling?—before hitting it. He could always just erase it and plead malfunction if it was someone he didn't feel like interacting with.

"Yo! Randall! It's Trip," came a feminine voice, chirping irreverently through the speakers. He recognized it once, and was glad to hear one of his few true friends instead of some solicitor or brown-noser from the company. "Gabriel scored a prime bootleg copy of that flick 'Bloody Gory,' if you're interested. You know the movie; it's the one Monstropolis City Council banned because it was _too_ gory. Just wanted to know if you wanted to watch it with us. Later!" There was a beep indicating the end of the message, and another to say it was the last message (or only, in this case). Randall punched the 'Save' button before it erased by itself.

Vivica Triptych, better known as Trip, and her son Gabriel were two of the few monsters Randall counted among his true friends. He had met Trip in a bar before he even became a scarer at Monsters, Inc, and they had hit it off right away. They were both foreigners to Monstropolis, which was a big factor in it, he supposed. (Throughout the monster world, certain types of monsters came from certain areas, and he was actually from a rural town inhabited by people who all looked a lot like he did. The major cities, like Monstropolis, tended to be a bit more varied, but there were still obvious 'races' that were more common in the city than others. There weren't many like him in Monstropolis, and it was the same with Trip—she and her son were the only representatives of their particular race of monsters he had ever seen.) She was intelligent, too, something he always looked for in a potential companion; it might be discriminatory, but he could not stand stupid monsters. They just rubbed his scales the wrong way!

And she had been one of his biggest supporters when he decided to try out to be a scarer. He knew his small size would count against him, since it had typically been the larger monsters who had the greatest impact on the humans. He had considered trying to pursue another career while he was training, and the taunts of the bigger scarers hadn't helped. But she had always stood behind him, spouting some sentimental tripe about following your heart that really _had_ sounded good at the time. When he had finally ascended to that prestigious position, she'd taken him out for dinner and a drink, and informed him with a toothy grin that all he had to do now was become the best Scarer in the company…

That wasn't really a lane of memory he wanted to go down, though, and to distract himself from pursuing the thoughts further, he plucked the phone off the cradle, tapped in the number for Trip's apartment, and waited for her to pick up.

* * *

Corinne waited until she had heard the door shut before sitting up, swinging her feet off the bed and making her way towards the door. She thought she had heard the faint click that indicated a lock's tumblers falling into place, but she had to be sure. She twisted the handle, but it wouldn't turn very far in either direction. She cursed that lizard-thing—Randall, he had said his name was—under her breath, and turned her back on the door, leaning against the smoothly varnished wood and sighing. She pinched the bridge of her nose, taking a moment to gather her thoughts, before looking around the room she had been locked in. It was only a small one, a little smaller than her room at home, and a lot neater. Other than the futon, there was a single chest of drawers across the room from it, with a small TV on top. A closet door was inconspicuously closed in one corner. Corinne crossed over to the chest of drawers, standing up on her tiptoes and reaching up to turn the TV on. It sizzled in a burst of static, and Corinne winced her head down and away, turning the volume down immediately. She flicked through a few channels, but all were static. She hissed her breath between her teeth and turned the TV off with a violent motion. Bending, she began opening the drawers in sequence, one after another. All were empty.

She restrained the urge to kick at the dresser, and went over to the closet instead. A surge of hope welled painfully in her chest. Hadn't he mentioned something about closets—? With an eager hand, she reached out to the door, turning the knob and pulling it open. There was just the inside of a closet on the other side, and an empty one at that, save for a single pillow and a few blankets folded on a shelf. Though she knew better, she still could not help shutting and opening the door a few more times, just to see if it would work. It didn't, and she slumped against the doorframe, finding herself fighting the sudden prickling of hot, angry tears. She would not, she could not—

Corinne began to cry. She slid down to the floor, drew her knees up to her chest, and buried her head in her arms, sobbing. Her entire body trembled with them, and they kept coming for a long, long time. She cried out her feelings of isolation, abandonment, desolation, faint hope, and terror, and eventually cried until no more tears would come. She was left trying to suck air into burning lungs in between violent hiccups that hurt her throat and made her whole body jump. She had not cried like that in…in years. It _had_ been years, hadn't it? More than years, even; it had been nearly a decade…

Chest still heaving with the hiccups, she got unsteadily to her feet, leaning heavily on the frame of the door. She stepped far enough into the closet to snatch the pillow and one of the blankets, and stumbled back to the foldout bed. She crawled atop it, pressing herself into a corner and arranging the blanket over herself. Once satisfied, she curled into the smallest, tightest ball possible, resting her chin against the arms crossed compactly over her chest and attempting to clear her thoughts. It wasn't hard; she was feeling totally drained now, physically and emotionally. Eventually, she fell into the deep sleep only the totally exhausted could manage.

* * *

She had the dream again as she slept, the same dream she had been having on and off since she was ten, and more vividly this time than she had in a long while. It started as it always did, with her lying in bed in a pitch-black room. Slowly, the room lightened—not enough to see clearly by, by no means, but enough to make out the vague, shadow-shrouded forms of the other things in the room. She sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes with small fists made chubby by the layer of baby fat on them. It was too dark for comfort, and she threw her arms around her knees and stared into the unfathomable void, trying to pierce it with young eyes.

Abruptly, a wedge of blinding white light cut into the dark, offering such a contrast that she let out a cry of pain and looked away, shielding her eyes. When she looked back, it was dark again, though a thin line of light glowed where the bright spear had come from.

And there were four others in the room.

She could barely make them out, but knew who they were just by their presences. Mother, brother, aunt, uncle. The family that had taken her on and raised her as their own child, the family she was too young to realize was bizarrely unusual, even by America's typical broken-home standards. She opened her mouth, to ask what was going on, but no sound would emerge. It never did. Uncle David came to sit on the edge of her bed, carefully not touching her, and watching the other three as they moved across the room in what was almost a solemn procession. She looked at David, the bewildered expression on her face all but impossible to make out, but he was watching the others so she did too. The woman she'd called aunt turned at the last moment, regarding her with huge yellow eyes. If it could be called anything, her expression was sorrowful. She turned away and joined the others where they stood by the only other door in the room.

It swung silently open.

One by one, they turned away from her and stepped through it.

Corinne didn't know where it led to or where it was going, but she knew it was bad. They shouldn't go through there! It was bad! She let out a wordless screech of protest, trying to jump out of her bed and getting tangled in the sheets. By the time she had managed to extricate herself, David had fastened his arms around her, pulling her close to him. Brother and Aunt were already through the door, which was a gray rectangle against the black and intersected by the tall, thin form of Mother.

"Sorry, love. We have to."

She turned and ducked through the doorway as well, shutting it behind her. Corinne began bawling, clawing and biting at Uncle David and trying to get him to let her go. He held fast, though she felt him wincing with each strike of hers that hit home.

"No!" she shrieked, capable of speech now in the dream. She tore free and ran to the door, which was closed and would not budge open, not matter how she twisted and pulled on the handle. "No no no no NO NO!" She pounded on the door, unable to say why she was so afraid, so scared at this very moment. "Come back! Come back, come back!" But they didn't, and she didn't resist when David came over, gathering her into his arms and taking her back to her bed. She buried her head in his chest, clutching handfuls of his jacket in her sore fists, and continued to cry while he awkwardly stroked her mussed hair and tried to make soothing sounds to calm her. The blackness of the room began to intensify again, until the only way she could tell David was still there was by his touch. She couldn't see, and she was alone (_alone enough; they had _left _her_), and the young Corinne tilted back her head and simply _wailed_—

—And woke herself with a gasp.

Her muscles were sore and stiff from the cramped position they had been in while she slept, and pain from them stabbed sharply along her shoulders and legs. She groaned, and tried to stretch herself out a little. She sat up, struggling briefly but violently with the blankets twisted around her, and lay down again. She twitched the covers straight and refused to curl into such a tight, tense position. She fell quickly back into sleep, and this time, no unsettling dreams dared to disturb it.

* * *

**Author's Note**: So Corinne's a little more chill in this chapter than in the first few, and a couple more characters get introduced! Woo.

Thanks to Till My Head Falls Off, Random Drifter, and Pixar for reviewing! (Hope Randall rings a little more truly for you in this chapter, Random Drifter...) Like I said last time, I intend to get the next chapter up in a week, but we'll see what happens.

All feedback is welcome and appreciated. Thank you for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

**Title:** Peculiar Institution  
**Rating:** T, for some possible coarse language and the eventual inclusion of adult themes

**Summary:** In a world where the Scream Extractor is a name on every tongue and human children have become part of the workforce, Randall Boggs makes an irrational decision and has to deal with the consequences.

**Disclaimer:** All canon settings, concepts, and characters belong to the good people at Pixar and Disney who created _Monsters, Inc._ All original material, including characters and concepts, are otherwise mine.

**Author's Notes:** I think I must be the only person in the world who has _less_ time to get on the Internet in the summer, rather than more. I do apologize for the (massive) delay in getting this chapter up. At least it's a long one…?

* * *

"Okay, I totally see why they banned this movie," Trip said, sounding disgusted as the end credits of 'Bloody Gory' began to roll. "Ugh!"

"And I here I thought you were the unshakable one," Randall commented, getting to his feet and stretching, bending over almost double on himself before he felt properly extended.

"Hey, I wasn't the only one who looked distinctly ill," Trip retorted, getting to her feet as well. She lifted her long arms over her head and stretched tall, fanning her narrow gossamer wings with a rustle. She was tall enough that her fingertips brushed his ceiling.

"Always have to one-up me, don't you?" he asked in mock-bitterness, looking up. "You're getting fingerprints in the stucco."

"Stucco doesn't hold fingerprints," she retorted immediately. "And besides, I didn't invent that _machine_ thing." She spread her hands conciliatorily, and the two thin black antennae that rose from her head dropped slightly, indicating her deferral to him on that subject.

"Ah, you could have if you had wanted to," Gabriel piped up, ever his mother's advocate, from where he knelt by the disc player, ejecting the movie and tucking it away into a case. "You're tech-y like that, Mom." Trip beamed at that, flushing slightly and glancing away.

It was very easy to see that Trip and Gabriel were related. They both had identical, olive green skin and those black antennae. Their eyes were huge slanted ovals, almost gem-like, they were so red. Both were rail thin, with big heads and flat, smooth faces, and skeletal, tridactyl hands. They could have been twins, if not for a few key differences between them, the most noticeable being height. Trip was taller than Randall, and Gabriel a little shorter. Gabriel happened to look young—there was a certain innocence about him that wasn't particularly hard to see, and appealing. Trip, on the other hand, looked almost…wary, all the time. Even when she was at her most relaxed, there was still an edge about her, something that almost seemed to warn strangers away.

Trip chuckled, wandering away from the two males and into the next room, the big kitchen. She folded back the shutter between the two rooms so she could keep talking to the others, and pulled open the refrigerator.

"I'm getting a soda," she called. "Either of you want anything?"

"Hey, feel free to help yourself to my fridge!" Randall called with a laugh. "No need to wait for an invite!"

"Oh shut up," she snapped, chucking a can of cola at his head through the open 'window'. He caught it before it could hit him, and bounced it lazily in one hand.

"Hey, Ran, why don't you open that?" Gabriel joked as he straightened up, tucking the disc case in one of his pockets. "You must be thirsty!" That was one odd thing about the pair of them; they wore a lot of clothes. Trip even made a habit of wearing shoes—shoes!—boots with hard heels that clicked sharply whenever she walked. She was clicking again as she strode back into the living room, a soda in hand, and perched herself on the back of one of the couches.

"So, does anyone else agree that that movie had no plot whatsoever?" she asked in a conversational tone.

"I do!" Gabriel said enthusiastically, flinging his hand in the air.

"No plot, but gratuitous nudity," Randall agreed with a nod.

"Gratuitously gratuitous, even," Trip clarified.

"Best kind."

"Hah!"

"So…what do you want to do?" Gabriel asked after a moment. "Y'know…post-movie and all…"

"Well, it's kind of late," Trip said, tilting her wrist to check a watch she wasn't actually wearing. "And one young monster I know has school later today!" She grinned.

"I don't think it's that late," Randall protested, turning to look at an ornate clock mounted on the wall.

"It will be by the time we get home," Trip said, draining the rest of her soda and crushing the can absently in her hand. They lived deep in the heart of Monstropolis, so there was truth in that statement. She grabbed her son by the wrist, pulling him towards the door. "Sorry for the abrupt withdrawal before having made full abuse of all your resources, Randall, dear," she said, blowing kisses his way. "But some young monsters need their sleep!" She flung the door open, pausing a moment to survey the blackness before the big floodlights came on and hauling her protesting son through.

"Hey, call me!" Randall shouted as the door shut, sealing silence in the house. Randall found himself suddenly tired, and realized that it really was later than he had thought it was. Not bothering to suppress a yawn, he crossed into the kitchen, pausing to replace his unopened cola in the refrigerator before flicking off all the lights and heading for the nearest staircase. The thought of his bed was becoming very inviting, but he remembered suddenly the human girl locked in the extra room at the end of the hall. He had forgotten about her over the course of the movie, taking it for granted that she was asleep, and realized now that that may not have been so wise a move. What if she had woken up and made a racket or gotten out somehow? Trip and her son may have been unorthodox in the world of monsters, but he didn't think that even they would condone what he had done…

Resolving to put more thought into the issue over the course of the night, Randall slipped silently up to the door, pausing to listen for the even breathing of sleep before unlocking it and pushing it open. The girl was still sleeping, but she must have awoken at sometime, because her head was cradled on a pillow and she had wrapped herself in a blanket. She murmured in her sleep and turned away from the bright light he was casting into her semi-dark room, but other than that, showed no sign of awakening. He shut the door and locked it again. It was with an unfounded feeling of relief that he retired to his opulent bed that night

* * *

"Er, Mom…?"

"Yes, Gabriel?"

"You sensed her, right?"

A pause. "Sensed who, Gabriel?"

"Don't be stupid, Vivica."

"Don't use that tone with me, young man." An evasion.

"You're being stupid, Vivica."

A sigh.

"I know."

Silence.

"So did you?"

"Did I what?"

Another pause. "Oh, forget it.

* * *

"Hey kid, are you hungry?"

Corinne groaned, rolling onto her stomach and willing the voice to go away and leave her to sleep. Probably David, trying to wake her up in time to catch the bus to school—like she ever rode the bus anymore anyway. If she didn't walk, she just got one of her classmates to give her a ride. They were always willing to, if she was willing to part with the right payment.

"Hello? If you don't get up and come get something to eat with me now, human, you're not going to get anything until I come back from work, and that's, like, eight hours from now."

The voice protruding into her pleasant dream of Captain Jack Sparrow and Legolas—again—was enough to stir her more this time, and she sat up groggily, rubbing at her eyes.

"Huh?" she asked, blearily beholding the purple figure lounging against the doorway, watching her. The wholly inhuman purple figure. Suddenly, it all came rushing back to her at once—the fight with David, the abduction, the…ah…second abduction, and the dream. "_Scheisse_" she cursed unhappily, scratching at the back of her neck with slightly ragged fingernails.

"It awakens," Randall remarked from the doorway. "Come on, kid, you've got to be hungry."

"I have a name," Corinne sighed, looking up.

"What?"

"I said, I have a name," she repeated. "It's 'Corinne'. Not 'kid'."

"Fine," he said, rolling his eyes. "Come on, _Corinne,_ you've got to be hungry."

"Well I'm not," she said rebelliously, crossing her arms and turning a deaf ear to the unruly rumbling of her stomach.

"Perhaps I should put it this way," Randall said slowly, spacing the words out as if considering them while he talked. "Either you come willingly downstairs with me and eat something of your choice from what I've got, or I'll pick the most rancid left-over from the back of my fridge, come up here, and force it down your throat." Corinne's eyes narrowed as she mulled that statement over for a minute, before she made up her mind and hurried to her feet. "I figured you were hungry," he remarked, turning from her and stalking away without a backwards glance.

She growled, low in her throat, and followed, fists clenched stiffly at her sides. She paid more attention to where they were going this time around, trying to orient herself somehow, though she wasn't sure exactly what good that would do her. The kitchen area he led her into looked eerily human, and she felt a chill shiver up and down her spine at the sight of all sorts of very familiar implements.

She hovered uncertainly in the doorway while Randall crossed over to the refrigerator, opening the door and peering critically inside. "I don't know what you humans normally eat," he remarked, "so I don't know what you'd find appetizing. Come and look." Corinne lingered a moment more, before squaring her shoulders and marching across the patterned linoleum to stand at his side. It was with an even more critical eye that she looked everything over, wondering if it was even safe for her to eat anything in this world anyway.

She wondered how much she would care if it turned out there weren't.

As with the kitchen itself, many things in the fridge were uncannily similar to things she ate at home—not the produce, so much, as the processed things. She reached inside, poking hesitantly among the food and wondering at what she saw. The can of soda she passed her hand over, unbeknownst to her, was the same one that had been thrown at Randall's head last night; it was good she didn't know, or she might have been tempted to imitate the action. Suddenly, she chose something at random and pulled it out. It looked like a pineapple, only with slightly longer spines on its rind, and she suspended it delicately between her fingers.

"What's this called?" she asked.

"It's a pineapple," Randall informed her, looking faintly amused. She felt a flare of anger—this didn't seem very amusing to her.

"This? This is so not a pineapple. Pineapples aren't quite so…venomous looking."

"I don't know what kind of pansy pineapples you eat, then," he said, waving one of his upper hands dismissively and reaching for something of his own in the fridge at the same time. "I like _this_ kind—you're welcome to it, if you can handle it."

Corinne eyed him warily for a moment, before shrugging and following as he made his way into a smaller room adjoining the kitchen, this one with the far wall made up entirely of windows that looked out upon the lands behind the house. There was a table, and it was at this Randall sat, finding a couple of plates in a side-table full of them first. He slid one across the expanse of highly polished wood, and she stopped it absently with one hand, setting the fruit on it with the other. The monster didn't say a word as she seated herself carefully on the edge of her seat, poking at the fruit wonderingly. It was…harder than the pineapples she was used to.

Corinne glanced up at him; that faintly amused look on his face was more pronounced

than before. That only made her more determined to crack this little dilemma on her own, and she pushed experimentally at one of the spines. It caused the pineapple- thing to roll over, so she steadied it with one hand before grasping the tip of one of the spines in her fingers and pulling. Much to her surprise, it came off in a neat little segment. She grinned triumphantly to herself, and promptly began to pull off all of the spines, laying them in a pile on the edge of her plate. Within a few moments she was done, and she was left with a venomously pink-looking, egg shaped inside of the fruit, which just happened to be oozing juice slightly. She stared at it warily for a moment—fruit was NOT supposed to be that color, especially not a fruit that was (nominally, at least), the same as a pineapple.

"Eat it," Randall suggested from across the table. She glared at him over the top of the fruit, before tentatively picking off a little bit of the pink flesh and popping it in her mouth. Instantly, her face puckered up; it must have looked funny, because Randall began to laugh. She didn't think it was very funny. She spat the little bit back out.

"It's sour!" she hissed unhappily. "Really, really sour." _Candy companies would kill for a flavoring like that!_ she thought, then frowned.

"It's better than the rind," Randall remarked. Corinne poked one of the yellow spears speculatively. Who knew…? Reaching down, she picked one up and nibbled gingerly on the end. It tasted like a pixy stick, and even sort of had the texture of one too, after she got through the outer layer of it. She let out an incredulous laugh.

"Nasty?" she asked. "You're kidding! It's sweet!" She hurriedly bit off more, chewing on it and enjoying the flavor of something she had practically been addicted to back home.

Back home. The taste of the pineapple's rind soured in her mouth at the thought of 'back home,' where the last thing she had done before her kidnapping had been…

_Fight with David._ Oh gods, what if she never saw him again? What if it turned out the last thing she got the chance to say to him was in anger? The thought made her shiver, and she had to shove the thought out of her mind. She'd see him again; she had to believe that.

"You all right?" Randall asked, watching her warily.

"Fine," she grumbled, stuffing the rest of the hunk of rind in her mouth and masticating determinedly. "Just fine." He shook his head disbelievingly, but didn't offer a comment to that. She wasn't really hungry anymore, she realized, but she continued to eat the rind bits slowly anyway. She looked up once, catching him eyeing the flesh of the fruit, which she hadn't touched. Sighing, she swept the rind bits into her hand and pushed her plate his way.

She turned to look out the window, determined to look anywhere but at the creature across the table. There were some trees encompassed in the view of the window, landscaped to look artlessly wild. Behind the trees, there were open fields, and around the fields—

Corinne squinted her eyes slightly. Yes, fences. There were fences around the fields behind the house. She traced the line of one with her eyes until she found where it originated from; a spacious wooden barn carefully screened by trees so as to be hidden from sight of the house, given away only by the lines of fencing radiating out from it and the dirt path that she now noticed winding it way to the invisible entrance.

"What lives there?" she asked, gesturing at the barn with a spine. Randall looked out the window to see what she was pointing at.

"Ah. Just a couple of unicorns."

"What?"

"Unicorns," he repeated, turning his emerald gaze back on her.

"Bull," she snapped automatically. "Unicorns don't exist."

"They do here," he said, and his unruffled expression had turned a little strained. "I suppose I could show you, if you were interested, but not now."

"Why not now?" she asked, a trifle petulantly.

"I've got to go to work."

"Work? As in a job? You have jobs here?"

"Yes, we have jobs here," he snapped, sounding a little affronted. "We're not barbarians, you know."

"Could have fooled me," she muttered darkly.

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

She looked up, repeating herself distinctly. An unidentifiable expression crossed his face, and Corinne felt a sudden stab of fear. What was she, stupid or something? _I must be trying to get myself killed!_ Randall stood up so abruptly that the seat he had been in toppled over backwards, crashing loudly against the floor in the suddenly silent room. Corinne's face blanched and she didn't bother to try and disguise the expression of fear on her face as he stalked around the table towards her.

Instead of doing anything that could have been considered aggressive, though, he just hauled her up out of her chair as well, practically dragging her behind him as he led her out of the room with long, purposeful strides. She had to jog to keep up, and did not dare protest when he practically threw her into her room, slamming and locking the door behind him.

* * *

**Author's Notes**: And suddenly, Trip and Gabriel are more than just voices on an answering machine!

Thanks to Till My Head Falls Off, Pixar, jla2snoopy, Random Drifter, and SylverStrike for reviewing! (Thanks especially for the crit, Random Drifter. That's a valid interpretation, and one I'd take into consideration if Randall's reptilianness—or lack thereof—was a big part of the story. It's really not, though, so I hope you're not insulted if I choose not to act on your suggestion!)

I'd put in the usual spiel about next-chapter-up-inna-week here, except that I don't know when I'll be online next. All I can say is that, no matter how long it takes me to update again, I have not abandoned this story. (I'm too close to the end to give up now.) Thank you for your patience!

All feedback is welcome and appreciated. Thank you for reading!


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